Previous posts
The blog tool allows cycling through the sequence of posts (and using the “categories” at the top and “tags” at the bottom) and has an effective search function. However, I have provided a contents list below, in reverse order, and they represent my current pre-occupations.
Bridges, Trams and Monuments
A full account of our holiday in France, Spain and Portugal.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/10/bridges-trams-and-monuments/
I feel so good!
Oh, another holiday! How did that happen?
https://www.pannage.com/2025/07/i-feel-so-good/
Lifelong Friends
A reflection on a meet-up.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/04/lifelong-friends/
Working From Home
Mostly about how I experienced the work-place and wider trends.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/04/working-from-home/
Managing the Overwhelm
I re-visited my use of news, information and media.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/02/managing-the-overwhelm/
Prospects for 2025
Speaks for itself. Includes my intro to BuJo.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/01/prospects-for-2025/
Bulgaria 1984
With the best of intentions I started the year with some de-junking of holiday papers which resulted in a trip down memory lane.
https://www.pannage.com/2025/01/bulgaria-1984/
Slow Journalism
I have enjoyed my subscription to the bizarrely titled quarterly print journal “Delayed Gratification”. Below is a graphic showing the “culture list of 2024” (see, it takes time to produce) and, frankly, I haven’t a clue where all this new culture happens because it passes me by. Without Netflix or the inclination to visit a cinema, films hardly figure in my consumption. We did see “A Complete Unknown” about Bob Dylan at the Picturehouse.
Source: https://www.slow-journalism.com/infographics/culturelist2024
The culture list 2024 from Delayed Gratification, the Slow Journalism magazine.
Click here for zoomable version.
The Guardian television review of 2025 also confirms the importance of Netflix and other programmes we miss.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/29/a-total-knockout-the-best-television-you-never-watched-in-2025
Perhaps we will stick to programmes like quizzes, motorway cops and Escape to the Country.
My other source of longer-reads is “Saga magazine”. I haven’t caught the bug for podcasts.
I haven’t found a decent source of local reporting. The Kent Messenger/Express/KoL webpages are unreadable and I don’t feel inclined to subscribe. Medway and Folkestone have local journalism, via Ghost and Substack, but Ashford seems to be missing out. Unless you know otherwise…
Local Authority by Ed Jennings £60 per year intro at £40
Local Authority remains a small operation. There is no office, no sales team, and no safety net. Most of the work happens in evenings, early mornings, and weekends, fitted around everything else.This work is also getting harder. Public bodies are slower to respond, more guarded when they do, and increasingly comfortable limiting access altogether.
That gap is the reason Local Authority exists. It is also why it is fragile.
https://www.localauthority.news/before-we-start-again/?ref=local-authority-newsletter
Folkestone Dispatch by Rhys Griffiths
https://folkestonedispatch.substack.com/p/looking-back-on-2025-in-folkestone
Books
I use Goodreads and have a list of 100 books “would like to read” – ain’t going to happen. I recorded 20 books read in 2025. They are mostly rubbish crime stories and thrillers with geographical settings I enjoy such as Venice, Rome and Nordic Noir. My favourite book I read this year was probably “Precipice” by Robert Harris about the correspondence between Prime Minister Asquith and Venetia Stanley as the country falls into the First World War. The skullduggery involved in intercepting the letters is surprisingly modern. You can follow me on Goodreads.
See more here…
https://www.goodreads.com/user/year_in_books/2025?ref=yyib_dec_25_yib_sa
Live Music
We enjoyed another Broadstairs Folk Week and this year was special as it was the 60th anniversary and with a new festival director. Highlights include: Lindisfarne
We managed a few Folk In The Barn events, too:
Oysterband
Daphne’s Flight
Le Vent du Nord
St Agnes Fountain at Canterbury Cathedral Lodge
Plus, at Bloomsbury’s, Miranda Sykes and Jim Causley – a Christmas concert.
You can follow my music on Spotify – Angus Willson
Birthday Celebrations
The family came en masse for my 70th birthday party at Singleton Environment Centre. Sally Ironmonger and Brian Carter entertained us with their songs including one written for me.
In September we stayed on a train in Dawlish Warren for Philip’s 40th birthday and went on the Seaton Tramway for a bird-watching session
Photographs
We both love taking photographs and this year has seen in upgrading the mobile phones with most acceptable quality and convenience. The holiday posts shown above include a selection and Marg posts in Facebook from walks in the countryside three times a week. These photos gain many compliments. Angus posts here in Facebook and also in a Flickr photostream.
The Observer’s defining photographs of the century so far
Which images best tell the story of the last 25 years? Our critics and editors make their case
In the past 25 years smartphones have made street photographers of us all. We scroll daily through countless images; each one of us, by default setting, now a restless 24/7 picture editor.
So the task of deciding on the 25 photographs that best define our troubled and chaotic century (so far) was almost absurdly difficult. The Observer’s lead photography critic, Sean O’Hagan, and the brilliant picture supremo of the New Review, Cheryl Newman, locked horns for several weeks over the selection, with impassioned input from several others. The idea was not to provide a newsreel of images, but to choose the photographs – and photographers – that have done most to move forward the most democratic medium in arresting ways.
Inevitably the big historical currents of our times found their way in: mass migration, climate change and war demanded new ways of telling. Some images seemed already burned on our retinas. How not to include the “hooded man” at Abu Ghraib for example? But, hopefully – judge for yourself – the final selection provides both light and shade, sources not only of outrage and suffering but also (whisper it) of optimism and humanity…
Source:
https://observer.co.uk/culture/photography/article/the-defining-photographs-of-the-century-so-far
Volunteering
It has been hard work getting the Resilience Garden into shape at Singleton Environment Centre. The story of the hops will have to wait for another time.
The NHS Walk and Talk, from the Centre, continues to be a delightful feature of the week.
